The rewards of Jose Padilla’s first crime weren’t counted in the dens of international terror. Instead, they came in the form of a stolen wristwatch and $107 in bloody bills taken in 1985 from a young man left to die in an alley.
Padilla, 31, who as a youth was called “Pucho” by his Logan Square neighbors because of his chubby cheeks, is now known as Abdullah al Muhajir, and U.S. officials alleged Monday that he graduated from the kind of street terror common on the West Side to something far more serious.
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Authorities arrested Padilla, who has “Jose” tattooed on his right arm, May 8 at O’Hare International Airport en route from Pakistan and accused him Monday of plotting with Al Qaeda to detonate a “dirty bomb,” possibly in the nation’s capital. Dirty bombs use common explosives to scatter radiation–and fear.
Padilla’s alleged journey, from the streets of Chicago and South Florida to the Middle East and into Al Qaeda’s operations in Pakistan, stunned those who knew him–from family friends who had lived with him in a graystone two-flat to his accomplice in the 1985 murder.
Along the way, Padilla, who was born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican heritage, moved to Chicago at age 5. By the time he was a teen, he allegedly told police he was a member of the Latin Disciples street gang. He flitted between jobs in hotel banquet halls, laundry rooms and kitchens, records show. And when he was arrested, he often would use aliases, at least seven of them, including Jose Alicea, Jose Ortiz and Jose Rivera, and provide police with different dates of birth.
But other than his 1985 arrest for murder, Padilla’s police record is typical of a small-time street gang member, police say. He fired a gun out of a window. He flashed gang signs. He repeatedly resisted arrest.
“I could show you a thousand people like this,” said a Chicago Police Department gang expert. “If you were to show me this record, I would say he’s gangbanger. These are gangbanging arrests. There’s nothing to tell me he’s a terrorist.”
In fact, most of his record points to attempts at crime that were foiled.
Under one alias cited on his Chicago police rap sheet, he was placed on probation in 1989 after punching a clerk who stopped him from stealing a doughnut. In 1991 he fired a revolver at a Florida motorist in an apparent case of road rage. While spending almost a year in jail for that crime, he allegedly attacked a deputy.
Remembered as quiet student
Nelly Ojeda, 63, and her daughter, Norma Leon, 47, have been friends with Padilla’s family since 1978, when Padilla and his mother moved into the ground-floor apartment of Leon’s two-flat in Logan Square.
Over the next decade, Leon knew Padilla as a quiet student at Darwin Elementary School, not learning of his street crimes until told by reporters Monday. But she did know that Padilla had converted to Islam and left the U.S.
In 1997 Padilla’s mother, who had moved to Florida, called Chicago to say that her son had married a Muslim woman and “went over there, to the Middle East, I don’t know where,” Ojeda said Monday. The mother also said her son had joined a cult, according to Leon and Ojeda.
“I figured that his wife was from over there. I didn’t think it was anything wrong,” Ojeda said. “People get married and go to other places to live. Why else would he go over there? He didn’t know anybody over there.”
Role in 1985 murder
Andre Boulrece, 34, of Chicago’s South Side hasn’t seen Padilla since Padilla was 14.
That’s when Boulrece and Padilla were arrested on the West Side after attacking three youths, according to law-enforcement officials and court records.
On Aug. 15, 1985, the two and possibly a handful of others chased and beat three neighborhood men. Boulrece took a watch from one of them and money from another, court records show.
One of the victims, Elio Evangelista, chased Boulrece and Padilla as they fled. When Boulrece got tired of running, he turned and stabbed Evangelista in the abdomen, according to court records.
Padilla and Boulrece threw Evangelista to the ground and kicked him in the head, records show. After digging through his pockets, they took more cash, leaving him crawling in an alley on his hands and knees. Evangelista died of his wounds. Police said they found the $107 in bloody bills after arresting the two men.
Boulrece was convicted of murder and was released from prison last year. Padilla was arrested for murder but convicted as a juvenile of aggravated battery, armed robbery and attempted armed robbery.
He was held in a juvenile detention center until his 18th birthday on Oct. 18, 1988, according to records and officials.
“I’m shocked. I had no idea that he had become the person he is today,” Boulrece said Monday of Padilla. The two had met a couple of times drinking and hanging out on the West Side, Boulrece said, and had never kept in touch after their arrests.
More trouble
It didn’t take long for Padilla to find trouble again.
Under the alias Jose Rivera, Padilla was found guilty in July 1989 on charges of attempted theft, battery and resisting an officer, according to police and court records. Under other aliases, Padilla was arrested between 1989 and 1991 on misdemeanor charges of criminal trespassing, battery, unlawful use of a weapon and obstructing police, according to police and court records.
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Several times he posted bail but never appeared in court to face the charges, records show.
Padilla was arrested under his own name in January 1991 for allegedly firing a gun out of a West Side apartment window. Chicago police caught him when he allegedly fell off a fence he was climbing while trying to escape. But he skipped out on his bail for those charges as well.
Records show that between 1989 and 1991, Padilla told police that he worked as a busboy at Ditka’s Restaurant, in the laundry at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and as a dishwasher in the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
In 1991 Padilla moved to Florida and found a job at a Holiday Inn banquet hall setting up tables.
Two weeks later, on Oct. 8, 1991, he was arrested after pulling a handgun and firing a shot at another driver at a Sunrise, Fla., intersection while behind the wheel of his car.
When police confronted Padilla at his house in Lauderhill, Fla., that night, they said he reached under his shirt and into his waistband. Beneath the shirt was a .38 revolver, police said.
He was convicted of discharging a firearm from a vehicle, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed firearm, according to police records. He was sentenced to 334 days in the Broward County jail, where he was accused on Jan. 4, 1991, of attacking a guard.